784 Crow Roosts and Roosting Crows. (September, 
who have settled half a mile further off to gossip and plume 
themselves before retiring. 
On one occasion I observed large companies arriving in the 
roost near Merchantville, at a time of full moon, for nearly an 
hour after sunset. Between the intervals of arrival all would be- 
come quiet in their bed-chambers, but, as a more belated com- 
pany drew near, their cries were responded to by the roosting 
crows in a different tone. The fliers would hurriedly ejaculate 
yur, yur, yur, as a Southerner pronounces “here,” giving each 
utterancea rising inflectionas if inquiring anxiously of their where- 
abouts, while those in the roost answered in a falling, drawling 
tone by slowly repeating their usual “caw” and lengthening it 
to ca-aw, ca-aw, ca-aw, as if to assure their friends they were 
resting comfortably, Above all places I ever visited, these roosts 
afforded the best opportunity for study of bird language, and 
furnished enough suggestions to threaten mental dyspepsia. 
The monosyllabic speech of a crow is by most accounted to 
be little more than a monoverbic “ caw,” but let such as thus re- 
gard it visit a crow roost and attempt to classify the sounds there 
produced and, if his ear be well set to music, he’ll have a long list. 
Among birds so eminently gregarious, language naturally be- 
comes an ever-abiding necessity. 
A crow is as great a conversationalist as is the nightingale 
a great singer; this one, out of the heart’s abundance, voices 
his music from a pure love of harmony; that one, out of the 
abundance of his wisdom, speaketh ; this is the sapphic humming 
of a tune; the other, a terse, laconic sentence made up of one 
word, yet calculated by its variety of modulation or of emphasis 
to convey variety of idea. On every occasion of my visits to 
those places the strange sounds uttered by those crows already 
gathered in the dormitory were a continual surprise. Were it 
possible to reproduce such sounds before a body of ornitholo- 
gists, nine-tenths of them would have no thought of assigning 
them to the vocabulary of any North American bird. 
Fifteen years’ intimate acquaintance with C. americanus (prior 
_ to visiting a roost) led me to regard him as the most monotonous 
_ of linguists, but a more extended experience reveals that he en- 
| _ joys an after-supper discussion with the family as much as ae 
_ do. This is also his way of spending the early morning how? 
eo before daybreak; and when the air is calm their greetings may 
